Grounded (Up in the Air, #3)(100)

I smiled at him. “You’re so right. We’ll probably have to kick them out at closing time every night.” The thought filled me with warmth. Our lives were changing, yes, but they were only getting better.

Javier was playing more than helping me pack, and I couldn’t have cared less. I didn’t mind doing it myself, and would have preferred his company, help or no.

I reached up to pull a box down from the top of my closet and felt his arms wrap around me from behind. He nuzzled into the middle of my back, purposely tickling me with his nose, and I turned into him with a laugh, pushing him until the back of his knees touched the bed. He fell back with a laugh, and I followed him down.

He tried to get up, but he’d started it, and I intended to finish it. I tickled him mercilessly, wrestling with him on the bed, pictures and clothes falling off with our exuberance.

“Uncle,” he cried, still giggling. “Uncle!”

I let up, kissing him. He practically melted underneath me. I loved it. I could feel how I affected him, and I treasured that. I pulled back, stroking his cheek as I gazed into his eyes.

He opened his mouth to say something, but a loud bang made his breath catch.

I tensed for one long moment, still staring at him, before I sprang into action.

I stood up, pointing at him. “Stay here, and stay down, ok?”

He swallowed. “Was that a gunshot?” he asked in a very small noise.

“I’m not sure what that was,” I lied. “But I just need to go check on Bianca.”

I was already striding to the bedroom door before he spoke again.

“Don’t go, Stephan. Please. I love you. Don’t put yourself in danger.”

I looked at him, my heart in my eyes. “I love you, too. Stay down. I have to make sure she’s safe, Javier. I couldn’t bear it if she were hurt.”

I tried to appear calm as I closed the bedroom behind me, but I was tearing through the house like a madman the second it closed. A second and third gunshot had sounded by the time I reached my back door. My heart was trying to pound right out of my chest with the fear. I couldn’t lose her. I was a survivor by nature, but I knew that I wouldn’t survive that.

I unlocked, opened, and tore through that door in an instant, fueled by blind terror. If that monster had hurt her, if he had so much as bruised her, I swore that I would tear him apart with my bare hands.

A fourth shot sounded just before I vaulted over the tall barrier desperately, scraping my hands with the effort. I landed on the other side, taking in the bloody scene before me with shock and horror.

Bianca’s father straightened over the fallen form of Blake. His chest was bloody, bloody circles blooming on his chest, but he was still standing. He held a small pistol in his beefy hand. It was so small against those huge hands that it almost looked like a toy.

Another body lay in the yard. Patterson, I thought, but I couldn’t even spare him a glance as Sven Sr. pointed the gun at Blake, aiming to take another shot.

“No,” I shouted, rushing at him.

He turned impossibly fast for such a big man. He smiled at me through bloody teeth as he aimed into my chest and fired.

My last thought was one of relief. Bianca wasn’t amidst the casualties.





BIANCA





I stepped outside, into a bloody nightmare, my eyes going unerringly to the crumpled figure of Stephan. I didn’t make a sound, but my face was wet with tears.

He has to be okay, I told myself. I could survive a lot of things, but I knew that losing Stephan wasn’t one of them.

I was so intent on this thought that I didn’t even look at the monster amidst the carnage for long moments. I had made my way closer to Stephan before I raised my eyes to those pale blue ones that looked so much like my own.

It was like staring into the eyes of a rabid animal, his malevolence written in every tense line of his face. It was hard to imagine that he had ever been a sane person, looking at him now. But had he ever been sane? I couldn’t have said. Perhaps sanity had never been the question. He wasn’t even a human to me, but a monstrous demon that destroyed and terrified. And the only one who had ever been able to act as protection between him and me now lay crumpled at my feet, red circles on his chest. He had finally done it. The monster had broken me.

My instinct was to freeze, and so I watched without moving as he approached, some awful expression that was shaped like a smile overtaking his face.

I didn’t have that violent thing inside of me like my father did. I didn’t have an urge to hurt anyone, not for any reason. It wasn’t even an urge that I understood. Or at least I hadn’t—not until Stephan lay crumpled at my feet.

My eyes moved from that horrible face and to the tiny pistol at my father’s side. I watched it like a lifeline, letting him see what I was looking at—what I’d fixated on.

He laughed, a dry cackle, and the madness of the laugh made me note, in an absentminded kind of way, that he was on something. Some kind of drug was racing through him, making him crazier, making him stronger, anesthetized to both pain and fear. The man had been a beast without some drug jacking up his system, so it was hardly a reassuring realization.

“I warned you, sotnos. I warned you that if you went to the police, no one could keep you safe from me, but you didn’t believe me. And now your friend is dead. Was it worth it?”